It’s not only comic book heroes and fairy tale characters who get origin stories. Cultural icons deserve them, too – or at least get them, deserving or not. It is hard to dispute, however, that the American pop culture landscape hasn’t been deeply influenced by two icons closely associated with New York: Donald Trump and Saturday Night Live. Both received their origin stories in films released this fall.
The Apprentice, a fictionalized account of Donald Trump’s business ascent under the tutelage of notorious fixer Roy Cohn, took a turbulent path to the big screen. Deriding journalist-turned-Apprentice screenwriter Gabriel Sherman as “a lowlife and talentless hack,” the movie’s real-life subject threatened legal action against the filmmakers if they pursued distribution. But Sherman and director Alli Abassi were determined that their film would be seen prior to this year’s presidential election, and they ultimately prevailed.
Was The Apprentice worth the trouble? I doubt any MAGA faithful will give it any credibility, and I find it equally hard to believe any Never Trumpers will be persuaded by the picture’s modest attempts to humanize the former president.
The Apprentice plops us in the mid-1970s, with twentysomething Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) on the cusp of blazing his own path in real estate after living in the shadow of his domineering dad, Fred Trump (Martin Donovan). At an exclusive club in Manhattan, Donald is summoned by Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who is at his regular table entertaining some of the Mafia bosses he represents as their attorney. Trump and Cohn are drawn to each other’s brashness. There are hints that Cohn, who kept his homosexuality closeted throughout his life, is attracted to the young man. For his part, Donald is intrigued by Roy’s assurance that he could help get rid of the Trump company’s legal problems with the Department of Justice.
So begins a transactional friendship. Cohn, who made his name in the early 1950s as the right-hand man for Commie-hunting Sen. Joe McCarthy, sees a kindred spirit in Donald. “I like this kid,” Cohn tells his cronies. “I feel sorry for him.”
One of the more impressive hat tricks that The Apprentice has to offer in this first act is how it softens the edges of Trump. Donald finds in Roy Cohn a surrogate father figure who, if not exactly nurturing, is eager to dispense Machiavellian wisdom. Cohn tells Donald his three rules for life, all of which presumably will sound familiar to anyone who has been awake these past nine years: “Attack, attack, attack”; “admit nothing, deny everything”; and “never admit defeat.”
From my untrained eye, great acting is often a matter of alchemy. Stan manages to imbue his character with a tentative, slightly wounded demeanor. He does a fine job inhabiting one of the most familiar people on the planet without succumbing to a pat impersonation. Even better is Strong, one of the finest actors working today, whose transformation is uncanny.
Alas, the movie does not rise to the magnificence of its leads. Donald gets richer, woos Czech model Ivana Zelníčková (Maria Bakalova), shuns his alcoholic older brother Fred Jr. (Charlie Carrick), and eventually sours on his mentor. The filmmakers deserve props for capturing the atmosphere of New York in the ’70s and ’80s and for filling smaller roles with near lookalikes, particularly Mark Rendall as Trump crony Roger Stone and Ian D. Clark as New York City Mayor Ed Koch.
Still, The Apprentice adds up to less than the sum of its parts. Abassi and Sherman provide no real narrative surprises.
A much more fun origin story, albeit just as fictionalized, is Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s kinetic account of the 90 minutes before the inaugural episode of NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
Think of it as an updating of a 1930s’ backstage musical, albeit set in the Me Decade. Saturday Night suggests that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, shortly before that Oct, 11, 1975, episode. At its center is 29-year-old producer Lorne Michaels (Gabrielle LaBelle), who must navigate through mishap after mishap, from an uptight NBC censor to equipment crashing to the floor. While the script by Reitman and Gil Kenan tries hard to give each SNL original cast member their due, the menfolk get more love. It is a bit disappointing that Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), such an indelible part of those years, is given little to do here.
If the parade of problems feels like a bit much, particularly the notion that Lorne still cannot adequately describe the sketch comedy show to network execs, I’m not going to quibble. The ensemble cast is superb, especially Cooper Hoffman as Lorne’s ally and fellow NBC producer Dick Ebersole, and Rachel Sennott as Lorne’s wife and co-writer, Rosie Shuster. Of the Not-Ready-for-Primetime-Players, standouts are Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd and Matt Wood as John Belushi.
For anyone who grew up with Saturday Night Live and the self-satisfaction that you were part of an elite and hip club, Saturday Night is irresistible nostalgia. (Oh, look! It’s the Julie Child cuts-her-finger sketch! Look, it’s Al Franken and Tom Davis!). It chugs along briskly, heightened by deft editing and Jon Batiste’s propulsive score. The addictive allure of nostalgia flows through Saturday Night as freely as the weed and cocaine being consumed backstage at Studio 8H.
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 